Someone once challenged me to list all the prayers and promises in scripture that God responded to or brought to pass instantaneously. I didn’t go too far in my search before I had to wrestle with texts such as Genesis 3:15, in which the promised seed only came centuries later. And Genesis 6:3, in which the flood came 120 years after the initial warning.
It quickly became evident to me in considering these and many other texts that the omniscient creator God works primarily through processes. There are cases when God steps in instantaneously with a miraculous act, but in most cases, God worked over time through a process that has its foundation in His Character of love.
In realizing this, I wondered why it is that we hardly ever pray, asking God to fix our problems or fulfill His promises in our lives over the next few years or in a decade or so. Why is it that our prayers seem to always ask God for the instantaneous and miraculous.
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While this question might be personal and harder to answer, what quickly became evident in considering it was that our problem lies deep in our religious worldview. A worldview that develops not only when we read the scriptures but also how we read the scriptures.
The challenge I have found is that in our reading of the scriptures, the passage of time usually disappears or doesn’t often register in our conscious mind. In Exodus 2:1-8, Moses is a helpless baby, and in verse 9, he is a grown man, strong enough to kill another man. Jesus The Messiah spent about thirty-three years on earth, but we have more details about His last three than the first thirty. And when we look at those last three, we find that we have His final week in greater detail than all the rest. Thus whenever these small but significant details fail to register, we somehow begin to believe that things have a way of happening instantaneously, shaping our religious worldview.
This worldview’s tragic results are evident in how we begin to settle for a ‘microwave’ form of religion. A kind of religious experience that promotes a God who does things and answers prayers instantaneously. A sort of spiritual child-likeness where God is thought of as an automatic vending machine; You slide in your prayers and outcomes the very thing you deserve.
This religious experience ought not to be what drives our religious experience. We can remedy this problem by Magnifying, Clarifying, and Simplifying our understanding of time in our reading of the scriptures.
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As an exercise in this, you may want to consider Paul’s life from birth to his first missionary journey. While his entire experience seems to slide past in a few verses quickly, careful consideration will show the time that it took for Paul to transition from Paul the Pharisee to Paul the Christian.
As you read and meditate upon this, remember that while God might appear late or even delayed, He is never late or delayed. He is working through a process whose principal goal is your salvation.
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